Today I want to share with you one of the most useful things I ever learned. It came from the wise woman on the right in the photograph, my dear friend Miss Helen Finn.
Near the end of her life, I visited and asked her if she was ready for a small surgery that was scheduled to happen the next week. “Katie,” she said, with a merry, knowing smile, “I’ve crossed it off my list!” And that was that.
Ever since then, I think about what I can cross off my list. When I follow Miss Finn’s example, I save myself time, worry, and effort. It’s amazingly freeing!
Good candidates for crossing off the list are: other people’s problems, stuff that doesn’t need to be handled right now, vague worries that may never come to pass, “good ideas” that feel burdensome, tasks that might seem necessary but which are, in fact, optional.
Recently, for example, I found myself thinking about a conflict happening in a FB group I’m in. It’s not my conflict and I don’t really know the people involved, but there I was: thinking about it, weighing the issues, the responses, the implications…
Suddenly it occurred to me that this was a prime candidate for Miss Finn’s “method.” I decided then and there to cross the whole matter right off my list. Instantly I felt disentangled from a whole mess that was optional for me to carry. Ah! Time to occupy my mind with something WAY more fun. 
I wonder: is there anything you could cross off your list today?
